October 20, 2006

Desert Island Potato Salad

I sometimes play a mental list sort of a game concerning "desert island" ingredients. I didn't make this up for blogging purposes-I've fooled around with it for years. This is how it works: You can pick 10 foods to have in reasonable supply, and must survive on them, alone and in combination. Acceptable cooking facilities are presumed, but nothing else. You can't have salt, for example, unless you pick it. And the ingredients must not be complex dishes. You may not choose chicken cacciatore, for example, and then pick out the mushrooms to prepare something else. That would be cheating. You can however, have bacon-and I always do- even though it has been prepared with salt and other stuff. Duck confit, chorizo sausage, harissa-well, those would be borderline, but probably okay-if you see what I mean. Demi-glace, on the other hand, would seem somehow inappropriate. Oh, and there's plenty of fresh water.

At this very moment my ever mutating list is as follows:
1. lemons
2 eggs
3. thick sliced, peppered bacon
4. unbleached all purpose flour
5.grapes
6. turkeys (preferably nicely prepared -I don't want to have to kill or gut anything. If that were part of the rules, I'd have to stick with fish and shellfish, animal kingdom-wise.)
7.spinach, kale, chard or mustard greens
8.unhomogenized whole milk
9.leeks
10. potatoes

I think I could go a long time without boring myself, though I deeply regret the absence of fishes and shellfishes,beans, apples,mushrooms, olive oil, garlic, herbs, sugar, peppers and spices. Probably should have picked olive oil instead of the bacon-healthier and all that, but this cook loves her bacon and needs something salty from time to time. I think it would take me a long while to get bored with these choices. And there would be some interesting projects-apart from the obvious wine/vinegar thing. I could try churning butter, capturing wild yeasts for bread, and raisin making. Anyway, I'd have plenty to read, what with my 5 books. Never mind.

Want to play? This is a very different list, in my mind, from a favorite foods list, as you must consider how the ingredients work together. I'm wondering if some stone ground cornmeal would be a better choice than the potatoes? But tonight, my islanders are having this super basic potato salad. I love all manner of fancy potato salads-there are endless excellent combinations, warm and cold. But I retain a fondness for the simplest sort, too.

This one was made from still warm potatoes and julienned leek, which were boiled in some turkey stock, and then drained, plus a few chopped hardboiled eggs. I cooked up a bit of bacon, and poured a little of the hot bacon fat over the potatoes, squeezed on some lemon juice, and added a handful of the bacon, crumbled up. Not half bad. The lemonyness is very nice with the potatoes. I can't say I've ever used lemon as the main acid component of a potato salad before. It is hard to ruin potato salad. Tomorrow: eggs florentine? Once I figure out the yeast/bread thing, I could stuff a turkey in time for Thanksgiving. I'd be a little worried about the prospect of a sugarless grape pie, though. Luckily, this is all (mostly) imaginary.

Somehow, when I play this game, I am left with a renewed appreciation for the variety of food available to me, as well as the conviction that I don't need to be always getting wound up about exciting new ingredients to have a tremendous variety of good things to eat and drink. The potato salad, which I really like, is quite different from any of my numerous previous ones. Still, no need to give that new ingredients thing up altogether; it's too much fun.

illustration is a 19th century Danish embroidery design, by Willi Koch. Seen in a paper given by Anna Wenner, in 1991.

Comments

I think you have chosen very wisely. For some reason I would rather have plain yellow onion rather than leek and I might delete the turkey in favor of some other vegetable or fruit or pulse. Here's a game I like to play: Take a given amount of money, you can be thrifty or extravagant, and go to a mainstream supermarket and buy as much as you can as long as it fits in one standard paper grocery sack. Assume a minimum list of pantry staples, salt, pepper, olive oil. I'm not sure about sugar and flour. Then ask as many people as you can get to play your game to come up with dinner, or a days worth of meals, out of what's in the bag.

Lynn-I actually thought long and hard about the yellow onions vs. leek thing. It was the (oft discarded) green part that was the deciding factor. I wanted something to use cut up finely, in an herby way. I guess I could have sprouted some of the onions- not sure if that would be cheating or not.As to the turkey- it seems to open up a lot of possibilities to me. And I love turkey stock above all others-except maybe duck.

I like your game. Especially if all the participants are real, and you get to eat the dinners.

But the pulses...they do call to me. This work is never done. And I am indeed a fruitcake, I'm afraid.For example, I was just wondering if I get the grape leaves with the grapes? I hope so.

Oh, I think it's definitely permissable to sprout the onion (and the pulses). Of course if were brave we could have the chicken (or turkey) and the egg and only count it as one item. I wonder what turkey eggs taste like.

Yes, I forgot to mention that everyone gets the same bag of groceries and then prepares a casual but festive meal for 6-8 people, so you would get to sample the results. I would also be curious to know what everyone does with an identical farm box.

Sounds like a pretty interesting game to play. Looking at the list it occurs to me that if you were able to have just a few more items, say 15, you could really expand your possibilities. Adding fish, a legume, and cheese would let you add a great deal more variety to your diet. With 20 ingredients the possibilities seem vastly larger. Very clever though about the unhomogenized whole milk and the possibility of making butter.

Julie:Once you get to 20, it's total hedonism...almost any combo will expand things, and the choice is less important than the first ten. Self indulgent to the last, here are numbers 11-20, off the top of my head:
11. a dry, aged cheese-manchego or parm?
12.lentils or cannelini beans
13.sea salr
14.apples
15.celery, with root and leaves
16.almonds
17. sugar
18.olive oil
19.cod
20. coffee

I think, 8 years ago my friends threw me a surprise birthday party that was based on the show Ready, Set, Cook, in which they bought two, nearly-identical-with-some-interesting-variations, bags of ingredients and we divided into two teams of 5-6 each. I will never, ever forget this.

This is a great idea, and my list would probably be quite similar to yours. Though I just might swap potatoes for chocolate. And leeks for tomatoes. Oh no, and of course I can't live without coffee! This is getting hard...